Are Hong Kong trade offices just Chinese propaganda machines?

China has reacted with anger at American threats to close Hong Kong’s trade offices in the United States, pledging to ‘take practical and effective measures to resolutely counteract it’, while the territory’s Commerce Secretary accused Washington of ‘slander’. In reality, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETOs), which were set up to oversee the territory’s external commercial relations and have some diplomatic privileges, are an anachronism. Now that Hong Kong has been stripped of its autonomy, they appear to have little purpose other than to parrot Beijing.

There are three such offices in the US – in Washington DC, New York and San Francisco – and on Tuesday the US House of Representatives ordered the government to examine whether they were operating independently of Beijing. If not they would be given six months to close. In effect, lawmakers are demanding that the trade offices justify their role as quasi-embassies – something they will struggle to do.